Nick Bierwisch, Saxonian Institute of Surface Mechanics, Nordhausen, Nordhausen, Germany
Nowadays the used materials or material combinations in all application fields (e.g. optical, avionic or automotive industry) are getting more and more complex. These complex structures are needed in order to increase the performance and lifetime of the components. Such improvements of each part of your complex device, tool or structural element are necessary to reach the performance goals demanded by the desired application. This increased complexity demands extended analysis and optimization methods. Engineering knowledge and rules of thumb aren't enough anymore.
Proper characterization and optimization of such structures requires invertible mathematical tools of sufficient holistic character. Unfortunately, as such tools are still not available one often finds trial and error or half empirical sensitivity analysis methods in combination with FEM or BEM. Faster tools could help here a lot to save development time and costs. With these faster tools it’s now also possible to simulate very complex contact situations with multiple contacts or imprints. For such conditions it’s not easy anymore to predict where the critical regions will be and this makes it very hard to find the correct simulation conditions and boundaries to be able to detect and visualize the most stressed parts of the system. Here the new tomographic view can help. It uses the same technology as airport scanners or medical devices.
This work will show the outcome of this new view option.